The Observatoire du Foncier maintained by the
Développement paysannal et gestion des terroirs (DPGT) project and the
Institut de recherches pour le développement (IRD) in northern Cameroon
since 1997 has revealed an increase in competition for access to land, both in
older areas and in immigration zones, and a certain deregulation that is being
caused by the superimposition of legal systems. The result is more precarious
landholding arrangements in general, with effects on renewable resource
management that in turn affect the sustainability of farming systems.
Landholding regulations in Cameroon are systematically applied only in urban
zones, and registering land deeds is a privilege reserved for the elite, whereas
the consultative and agropastoral commissions whose function is to observe land
use and settle disputes have lost most of their intervention capacity. Migration
pressure, the superimposition of land uses and the abandoning of land management
to tribal chiefs are now causing conflicts of interest between communities with
opposing practices and strategies. These disputes must be managed before they
degenerate into more violent confrontation. Although the political context is
not favourable, these small-scale rural experiments show that public
intervention in landholding is possible without systematic recourse to the Land
Code, and that they can remain close to the usual arrangements of
traditional practices.